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AstraZeneca

Latest Headlines

A group of the world's leading drugmakers have joined the U.K.'s ambitious initiative to sequence the genomes of 100,000 Britons, mining the data with hopes of finding new pathways to treat cancer and rare diseases.

Harvard professor Doug Melton is having quite a week. His work on potential cell therapies for diabetes just fueled the launch of a well-funded biotech startup, and now he's signed up with AstraZeneca to help the drugmaker spotlight new treatments for the disease.

AstraZeneca's ambitious goal of boosting sales by 75% by 2023 relies heavily on its work in the high-profile field of immuno-oncology, but changing winds and rivals' successes might make it hard for the U.K. drugmaker to follow through on those promises.

The list of IT vendors and service providers that have yet to strike a deal with AstraZeneca in 2015 keeps getting shorter. Assay Depot is the latest name to cross of the list after the scientific services marketplace agreed to create a private research e-commerce platform for AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca announced a partnership with Daiichi Sankyo to sell its opioid-induced constipation therapy Movantik in the U.S. for a $200 million upfront fee from the Japanese drugmaker followed by sales-related payments of up to $625 million.

The star of AstraZeneca's $1.2 billion acquisition of Pearl Therapeutics hit its main goals in two late-stage COPD trials, the company said, clearing the way for regulatory filings and what the drugmaker hopes will be blockbuster sales.

Much-anticipated data on AstraZeneca's clot-fighting drug Brilinta, unveiled over the weekend at the American College of Cardiology meeting, showed that Brilinta did stave off serious cardiovascular problems, when used long term alongside aspirin. But the numbers were small enough--and the bleeding risks high enough--to put a damper on new sales hopes.

U.K.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca said it supports research into new therapies for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a complex syndrome for which there is currently no effective treatment for patients, by working with Singaporean research and clinical communities in a two-year program.